California High School's Offensive Scheme Adds Randomness to Football | Hacker News Reader

California High School's Offensive Scheme Adds Randomness to Football

sciam.com

15 pointsedw51915 comments

  ;offensive scheme...
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The part about randomness is a red herring. They are choosing from a larger set of plays than is usual. The article implies that this is somehow akin to randomness, but I think that's a bit of a stretch.

I do remember some research on using random selection among plays in football to improve offense. Maybe the value of random selection diminishes as the number of possibilities increases.

I think the point is that a given formation has many more eligible receivers that standard football plays.

I think writer is saying random since you never know whether the player you're facing on the other side is going to be a lineman on that play or a receiver.

This article is silly. Maybe in some random high school league you can have 11 eligible receivers, but not anywhere else. In the pros, you need to have at least 7 players on the line of scrimmage and the 5 linemen are not eligible receivers.

There's a discussion in this thread: http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=87&f=2909&t=2717293&#...

Basically it's a kick formation.

a11offense.com says it's approved in 40 states. What does that mean? Do the rules of football change from state to state? Would it be legal in the NCAA? How about the NFL?

I imagine the main issue is the number of eligible receivers different leagues allow. In the NCAA offensive linemen cannot be receivers, and in the NFL, you have to have at least 7 players on the line of scrimmage, and only 2 of these are eligible (basically linemen aren't eligible).

There are probably similar rules in the high school leagues for the other 10 states.

If this became widespread, I would think it hurts smaller schools with less talent. Think about schools like USC that have a dozen speedy All-American playmakers in their three-deep. It's bad enough trying to defend them with the current # of ball-eligible players. Can't see why the bulk of teams would want to allow this.

But then you wouldn't have coaches pushing adolescents to pack on 50 pounds so they can compete on the line.

With these plays, you don't need all-star speed, just really good execution.

I don't understand how they're not getting sacked left and right with no linemen. 7 yards isn't that far.

I don't think having fewer than 5 linemen is a legal formation. The article is confusing in it's explanation of the formations. If you look at the slides of the plays (link at bottom), there seem to be at least 5 player on the line of scrimmage.

I'm not sure exactly what scrimmage kick formation is, but from a little googling I was able to determine that the defensive linemen aren't allowed to make contact with the center after the snap.

Basically the theory behind the offense is that the ball moves faster than any player. So, if you stack the line of scrimmage for a blitz there should be several people wide open on either side of you that you can throw. Also, this is high school where players are much slower. I'm not sure this would work in the NFL (its illegal under current rules afaik).

They've got 2 quarterbacks, so it adds hesitance. Also, there are back field blockers, and the quarterback rolls out almost every time.

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